The Hour of Lead (34 page)

The children both worked as soon as they were old enough to ride
bicycles. Angel, in high school, tended neighborhood children and cooked harvests for the family of a boy she'd been keeping time with. Luke delivered papers, cleared driveways, piled leaves, and cut lawns, depending upon the season. The children kicked half their wages to Wendy, who kept the family books tight as a stuffed goose. She would ration their savings back to them when she saw fit, which wasn't nearly as often as they did.

Matt watched this with some worry. He'd worked from childhood and, reflecting, it seemed part of what wrecked him for laughter and play. He hoped the children's lot would be better. On occasion, he would pass on to them extra from what Wendy allotted him. Once she set a crate with all their business on the coffee table.

“Maybe it's time you keep this family square,” Wendy told him.

He picked out a tax form and looked at it. “We'd be busted.”

“With a houseful of toys.” Wendy said.

“A live giraffe probably,” Matt chuckled.

“It's not all that funny,” Wendy told him.

“I'd get whatever you wanted, too,” he said.

Matt considered Roland. The old man couldn't help himself regarding his children and it seemed Matt was in the same fix. Wendy attempted to instruct them, while he cheated them all out of the lesson to enjoy the children's good cheer. And, like Roland, he was keeping them from her.

The children, though, saw him as their patron, and it was with this knowledge that, in the early summer of the year of Sputnik, they approached him requesting a car.

“Tell her it's practical,” Angel said. “She likes things practical. She's always having to haul us places. This would save her from it.”

“Maybe she likes taking you.”

Angel rolled her eyes. “It would be fun. That's what we were thinking.”

“There's fun to be had walking, too,” Matt said.

“I've been walking a long time,” Angel told him. “I think I've taken all the fun there is from it.”

“I could buy a horse. You could drive him.”

“I'd like a horse,” Luke said.

“How about a horse, sister? That's what I did all my driving on.”

“I'm not a cowboy,” Angel replied.

Matt patted her shoulder. “You're not a car driver, either,” he said. “And I doubt that will change.”

•

W
ENDY LAY IN BED WITH
a book by some Frenchman named Camus. Matt rested next to her studying the last of the morning paper.

“She's going to be married before you know it. They both are,” Matt said.

Wendy feathered her book and turned to him. “You worried for them?” she asked.

“No more than usual,” he said.

She covered the ground between them and dropped her head to his chest. She could hear his heart and lungs through his breastbone and thick skin like the generators underneath the dam, spinning and cranking without end, the steady hum of work. The book was on her lap, still and open. She closed it, thinking how little words could really do. She lifted her face to Matt's and he kissed her and she handled him in the manner that had become her invitation. He switched the light, and they readied each other for a while. Finally, he put himself over her. She pressed her hands into his chest. He rocked above her like a stone she was trying to find a place for. She listened to his breathing and let hers match it. She wrapped her sex to his until they became one thing moving instead of two and she was able to break loose and finish for herself.

After, she lay next to him. His eyes were open and blinking at the light from the window.

“The children want a car,” he said.

She laughed.

“I think they're serious.”

“I'm sure they are,” Wendy said. “Could you imagine us with a car at that age?”

Matt said. “I don't guess I can.”

“You'd have brought me a Ford rather than a gelding.”

“I'd never even have to train it,” he said. “Just go to a mechanic.” He laughed, too. “And it would never have kicked you.”

“Even if it did you could've just changed its tires or something, you wouldn't've had to kill the thing. And I'd never shot you off the roof.”

Wendy found the scar on his stomach. She made circles around it with her fingers.

“I probably never would've come down and bothered you,” he told her. “You'd have had a fine life.”

She shook her head. “You'd've come.” She thought of Angel and Luke. They were just arriving at living.

“A car,” she whispered.

•

T
HE FOLLOWING
S
ATURDAY
, M
ATT DROVE
Wendy to a farm that stood on a sagebrush knob of the scab country west of the river. Rock and no rain made it useless for even the sturdiest crop. Instead the family owning it collected scrap iron. The patriarch was a bald fellow whose shuffling walk led them to a '48 Ford. Wendy wrapped her jacket close to fend off the gusting wind.

“She's due a little cleaning,” the man told Matt.

The car was boxy shaped and an unsettling green. The grill had rusted. The junk man opened the door and the ignition chattered
until the motor turned over, though it sounded like a washing machine full of shoes. Rat turds pebbled the floor.

“What'd you say again?” Matt asked.

“Twenty-five dollars.”

Matt glanced at Wendy. “It runs,” he said.

“I can hear it.”

“Tires got air.”

Wendy pulled her coat tighter. “Seems a bit neglected.”

The junk man pressed the accelerator. The motor whined. “It's a goer,” he told them.

“But is it a stopper?” Wendy asked.

“I don't know,” the man said. “It ain't moved in a good while.” He looked at the dash and fingered a crack there. “I thought I was doing business with your husband,” he said.

“The children driving this belong to both of us.”

“Well I'd hope for their father's manners instead of yours,” the man said.

Wendy stepped back from the car to let Matt take up the bargaining. Matt spat on the ground and shook his head.

“You seemed ready enough a minute ago,” the man told him.

“Minute ago you hadn't talked coarse to my wife. I believe it will cost you twenty-five dollars.”

The man opened his mouth, but Matt raised his hand. “You ought to stop while it's just money.”

“You threatening me on my own place?”

Matt said, “I'm done talking. That just leaves doing.”

Matt steered her for their car. She took his hand. They returned to town with the heater going. Wendy warmed her hands over its vents.

“It's not often a woman gets her husband to take up for her like that,” Wendy said.

“I didn't think much of the car was all.” Matt waited a moment then winked at her. She laughed.

“Don't seem we can spend much more,” he said.

“Yes we can,” she told him.

“I thought you'd fight this the whole way,” Matt said. “Now you're wanting to put up more than I'm willing.”

She smiled. “Maybe I'm turning unpredictable.”

“You've always been that.”

“I have, haven't I,” she said.

“You going to take in ironing to pay for this car?” he asked.

“Look at you arguing for thrift.”

“I guess it's my turn isn't it?”

She laughed again. “There's a rainy day account I've been keeping.”

“What if it rains, though?” he asked.

“Rain is just weather,” she said.

Matt turned them onto the highway dividing Grand Coulee. B Street still had its dark reputation but clean businesses lined the highway thoroughfare. Wendy wanted real car lots. There were two. They stopped at the first. The sun was warmer and the wind had relented. Wendy pointed to a fifty-six Chevy, blue as evening sky. It appeared to have never seen the road. The seats were clean as restaurant plates and the untarnished ashtray metal shone.

“It's twice what we drive,” Matt said.

“I know.”

“See the price?”

Wendy nodded. The sun reflected off the paint and it looked to Matt to glow, like those pictures of Christ assuming the throne.

“It's as pretty as a good horse,” she said.

He smiled at that.

“Well, they'll be tickled. I can tell you that.”

Wendy paid with a bank draft and the dealer threw in the first fill-up free. Matt offered her the keys. He followed in what would be now known as the old car. The power steering wheeled Wendy out
of the graveled lot with a quarter turn of her hand. She felt graceful as a doe. When she eased into the accelerator, the motor lifted her like air itself was all that was underneath. She closed her eyes and thought of the children driving off from sadness instead of slogging through it.

Matt parked on the street. Wendy opened the door and Angel and Luke tumbled from the trailerhouse. They stood for a long while in the driveway without moving. Luke was open-mouthed. Angel finally turned to Matt.

“Oh Dad,” she said. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

Matt undid Angel's hug and put her hands in front of her, between them. “It'd do you some good to appreciate your mother,” he told her. “This was her work all.” He walked inside, leaving them alone.

Wendy watched Luke and Angel, who approached the car like it was an animal they were trying not to spook. Luke touched the fender with his hand, then bent his face to the warm metal.

“I never saw anything so pretty,” Angel said.

“I'm pleased you like it,” Wendy told her.

She handed Angel the keys. Luke hurried through the passenger door and waved from behind the glass. He uncranked the window. “Hey Mom,” he asked. “You want to go riding?”

She surprised herself and did, leaving the front seat for them. The radio worked fine and they found some modern music that couldn't even succeed in annoying her. When her children glanced back, Wendy's eyes were closed and the wind was spanking her hair and jacket and she was smiling at the pleasure of their travel together.

39

M
ORNING
, L
UCKY LAY PROSTRATE ON
the grass and studied the sunlight through its dew. Each breath clanged his lungs against his ribs and he decided at least one was broken. His clouded right eye leaked blood and yellow fluid. Through it, the horizon seemed upended. Blood pasted his tongue to his mouth. Sleep and the beating bent his thoughts and, for a moment, he couldn't recall what put him on the grass this early morning. A car hushed by, and Wendy's voice turned audible through an open kitchen window. He comprehended the words separately, but in a sentence they confounded him. She spoke of sandwiches and a fresh peach and being short of bread and coffee and Lawson answered, the voices gonging inside Lucky's skull.

The door opened and Lawson lifted him with an ease that he was unprepared for. He stared up into the jaw, clean-shaved but still peppered with what would be beard and the nostrils and thick shock of hair. He had never seen a man's face as close. Matt's calm
eyes gazed ahead. Lucky watched the face pull away until he could see its whole shape.

“What happened to you, hombre?” Lawson asked him.

Lucky moaned.

“Okay,” Lawson told him. “What is hardly the point.”

Matt stared into the sky. “What am I going to do with you?”

Lucky wrestled his badge from his shirt pocket.

“Law?” Matt asked.

Lucky nodded. “Got jumped hunting a fugitive. Slunk off while they were drinking. Caught a lift and got dumped here. Couldn't manage any more.”

“Your man close?”

“Coulee Dam. He'll want to close the deal. A load of warrants got his name on them.”

“You want me to find a cop?”

“He is a cop for the county,” Lucky said.

“I can give you a lift toward the dam.”

“I'd say that's the wrong direction for me.”

“I imagine so.”

“If you could let me lay up in your place an hour or so, I could get some help and turn the tables.”

“There's a thousand ways that's a bad idea.”

“I know,” Lucky said.

“I'm asking.”

Lucky lifted the man and lugged him into the trailerhouse and dropped him onto the sofa. Wendy joined him. She wore a housecoat, but most of her leg showed before it buttoned. The darkness above made Lucky giddy.

Lawson said, “He was on the grass.”